I wonder if Austen really wanted the reader to “like” Fanny, or have we fallen in some trap…especially if Austen herself was opposed to the traditional idea of excess without love. Not sure… Well, Austen is not Hemans who celebrates action, if not for love, per se, but she listens to women’s lives and records them in poetry to let them have their own voice and experimental experience of living in a poet’s collection.
The turning point in of Fanny’s change toward any action, in the novel, instead of controlling herself against other people’s decision, (the play), are more reactionary, even though her actions not to participate seem voluntary at times and carry agency. The moment she receives the note from Edmond with the necklace becomes a catalyst of a switch form the logical to the imaginary. The note challenges her creativity with words. At this moment she sees that words can be manipulates, rearranged to give a desired meaning to the reader. Her worldly ethereal observations of the stars and the high trees become touchable with words and manipulations of language. It appears as a spiritual moment but it is an intellectual one instead. Like the clergy who need to use language to help others construct ideas of god that can be received in their imagination, Fanny discovers her powers of creation.
She invents an emotion and event, a proposal form Edmond that is not there. He offers her four words and she rearranges them to create different meaning. “My very dear Fanny” could be altered completely had she looked at a different order such as “My Fanny, very dear” or Eliminate two words and just keep, “My Fanny”. Austin was not aware of linguistic deconstructions as such, but uses the power of language in very similar ways. So she cannot argue what is written explicitly. At the moment Fanny “the more distinguished author” is a cross between Fanny and Austen. The enthusiasm of a woman’s love is even beyond the biographer’s” (275). Austen at this moment has given Fanny the creative authority of her own destiny. In a sense, that moment in the novel the author herself gives up a bit of control and surrenders to Fanny’s new identity of a woman who has claimed love. Fanny is now to develop into a more active participant to what happens to her relationship with Edmond.
I wonder if Austen really wanted the reader to “like” Fanny, or have we fallen in some trap…especially if Austen herself was opposed to the traditional idea of excess without love. Not sure… Well, Austen is not Hemans who celebrates action, if not for love, per se, but she listens to women’s lives and records them in poetry to let them have their own voice and experimental experience of living in a poet’s collection.
The turning point in of Fanny’s change toward any action, in the novel, instead of controlling herself against other people’s decision, (the play), are more reactionary, even though her actions not to participate seem voluntary at times and carry agency. The moment she receives the note from Edmond with the necklace becomes a catalyst of a switch form the logical to the imaginary. The note challenges her creativity with words. At this moment she sees that words can be manipulates, rearranged to give a desired meaning to the reader. Her worldly ethereal observations of the stars and the high trees become touchable with words and manipulations of language. It appears as a spiritual moment but it is an intellectual one instead. Like the clergy who need to use language to help others construct ideas of god that can be received in their imagination, Fanny discovers her powers of creation.
She invents an emotion and event, a proposal form Edmond that is not there. He offers her four words and she rearranges them to create different meaning. “My very dear Fanny” could be altered completely had she looked at a different order such as “My Fanny, very dear” or Eliminate two words and just keep, “My Fanny”. Austin was not aware of linguistic deconstructions as such, but uses the power of language in very similar ways. So she cannot argue what is written explicitly. At the moment Fanny “the more distinguished author” is a cross between Fanny and Austen. The enthusiasm of a woman’s love is even beyond the biographer’s” (275). Austen at this moment has given Fanny the creative authority of her own destiny. In a sense, that moment in the novel the author herself gives up a bit of control and surrenders to Fanny’s new identity of a woman who has claimed love. Fanny is now to develop into a more active participant to what happens to her relationship with Edmond.